I Turn My Mic On
by foojules
Summary: Revolution Sybil Style Now universe, a few months after the epilogue. While recording an album together, the newly married Crawley-Bransons make good use of some private downtime in the recording booth.


_AN: This is in response to a prompt the lovely and talented cassiemortmain sent me aaaaages ago (so you see how good I am about prompts). It's an "Imagine your OTP" scenario in which our heroes are recording an album together and have "a little naughty fun" in the vocals booth while they're in the studio alone, and it just happens to be recorded. Enjoy!_

January 1996

"That was _great_, Syb," says Anna in her earphones as soon as the last echoes have died away. "I think that was the one."

"Really?" Sybil is less sure; she thinks she might have been a bit sharp on that last chorus, overcompensating for her voice's natural tendency to pitch downward.

"Totally!" Anna's enthusiasm crackles through. "I mean, if you want to do another take, we can, but with vocals the first few are usually the best. The soul tends to fall off a bit after that, I find, yeah?"

"It was brilliant, love." Tom's voice, farther from Anna's mic, is quieter. Sybil meets his sincere gaze through the soundproof glass and he gives her an encouraging little nod.

"All right. If both of you think so, then I trust you." Sybil takes off the headphones, hanging them carefully on a hook driven into the blond-wood walls of the recording booth, and opens the door to step into the control room: a cavelike space made cozy by an overstuffed sofa and framed concert fliers on the walls, where most of the light comes from Anna's computer monitor and the gently shining LEDs on the mixing board. "Shall we try and do backups tonight?"

"Sure, why not?" Anna shrugs. "As long as your throat's all right. But I'm starved. Fancy a curry?"

Sybil wrinkles her nose. "Not before I record vocals. But you go ahead." She plops onto the sofa next to her husband, who reaches over and gives her knee a little squeeze. _Husband:_ it still feels weird to think it, and at the same time so electrifyingly lovely that she gets a chill every time. _Tom is my husband. _Sybil can tell it's the same with him, by the way his mouth curves whenever he says _my wife_, which is often.

Anna laughs. "Your work ethic impresses me greatly, m'dear. I'll just pop down to the place on the corner. Tom, you hungry?"

"I've to record backups as well," he points out.

"But you've both got to eat, you know. I could pick you up something for later."

They submit to Anna's mother-henning and give her their orders, and she clumps off in her combat boots, ridiculously oversized over her fitted black jeans. "We may as well get comfortable," Sybil sighs. Anna may seem reserved at first glance, but she's downright gregarious with people she knows, and she gets takeaway from that shop at least four times a week. They spent over an hour waiting for her during their last session.

Tom goes over to the computer, sits down, and starts clicking around. "Let's have a listen."

"Should we?" Despite the fact that they've practically lived here for the past week, Sybil is still hesitant to venture into the producer's domain.

"Why not?" He adjusts a few virtual knobs and sliders and clicks _Play_. The track they're working on blares through the monitors which are strategically placed around the room. "Definitely needs something," he says after a minute, over the music.

"It sounds pretty good, though, doesn't it?" Better than Sybil would have thought when they were sitting in the practice space borrowed from her "real" band for one night a week, listening to the rough four-track recording they'd made.

"It sounds great. But it needs backing vocals." Tom turns to her, eyes sparkling with an enthusiasm which she knows from experience usually leads to trouble. "Whyn't we lay some down? Since we're on the clock."

"I'm sure Anna won't charge us for the time she spends going for takeaway!"

"Even so. May as well strike while the iron's hot, yeah?" A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and they both know how irresistible he is when he gets like this.

Sybil sighs and makes a show of putting up a fight. "I don't know, Tom." But he can tell from her face that he's won.

-o-

Half an hour later Anna still isn't back and Sybil has done her level best, but she seems to have lost the magic from before. "Fucking dreadful," she groans, after stopping halfway through another uninspired take. "I'll have to do them again later tonight. I think it's your turn to have a go." Tom looks up from where he's fiddling with something on the mixing board. "Should you be messing around with those settings?"

"Anna's got them marked where she wants them." He gets up and slips inside the recording booth door; Sybil takes off her headphones and hands them to him, making ready to take his place at the board.

"So when you're ready I just click _Record_, right?"

"Ahh, actually I think we might have to make a few adjustments." He holds the headphones awkwardly in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over them. He's still blocking her way out.

Sybil shifts her weight. "I think we should wait for Anna to come back."

"Yeah, maybe." He backs up against the door until it closes with a muffled click, shutting them both inside. "D'you know… we never had a proper honeymoon."

She raises an eyebrow. "I thought this was our honeymoon." Granny is financing this recording session, having sent them a cheque just after Christmas, when they'd announced their days-old elopement. With it came a dryly worded letter expressing her certainty that, since they had not seen fit to invite any of the family to their nuptials, she would not expect to have an opinion on the matter of their wedding journey, but she hoped they would enjoy themselves.

"It is. But I feel like I've not really seen you."

_Seen me naked, he means._ Sybil lowers her eyes and bites her lip to suppress her smile. Tom steps closer to kiss the turned-up corner of her mouth, which turns into him sucking on her bottom lip, his hands up the back of her T-shirt. The studio's £500 headphones thump to the floor. "Hey," Sybil murmurs, "I thought you wanted to do vocals."

His lips move softly to her jawline; his hand traces a circle on her back, moves down to toy with the waist of her jeans, fingers just barely dipping inside it. "I think we should wait for Anna to come back."

That dashes cold water on the slow fire building within her. "Oh. Right."

He feels her stiffen a little in the circle of his arms, but he doesn't stop. "Ahh, you know she won't be back for ages. We've plenty of time…" He moves his hand around under Sybil's shirt to rub his thumb gently over her nipple through her bra, smiling when he feels her intake of breath. "Besides, don't tell me you've never thought about doing it in a recording booth. Seems like that'd be right up your alley."

Sybil's cheeks go warm at the allusion to her exhibitionist tendencies, but in a nice tingly way that spreads to other parts of her as Tom kneads her breast gently, thumb still circling her nipple. It's not that she gets off purely on the thought of others seeing, or in this case hearing. It's mostly that being with him makes her feel so free she wants to break wide open. Before she knows it her arm's around his waist, pulling him flush with her as her other hand strokes his cheek. "All right, husband," she play-growls. "I'm giving you ten minutes to make me come."

He does it in five.

-ooo-

The next day they're back to do a preliminary mixdown, and Tom could swear he sees Sybil blush when she looks at the vocal booth. For his part, he can't keep the smile off his face. _Honeymoon indeed._ He's so distracted he barely manages a civil greeting for Anna, who didn't return yesterday until a good quarter of an hour after they'd pulled themselves together.

They sit on the sofa to listen, Tom resting his hand high up on Sybil's thigh. She gives the hand a look and does everything but roll her eyes and clear her throat, and he moves it down... but only a little. She can't fool him with that demure act, not after the way she was yesterday, and again last night after they got home. He's already thinking about sending Anna for curry again.

He'd forgotten all about what he did just before joining Sybil in the recording booth yesterday, until a minute or so after Anna clicks _Play_.

_Oh bollocks. _He'd meant for them to listen afterward and delete it. _Maybe she hasn't noticed._ But no: Sybil has opened her eyes and cocked her head, peering sidelong at the speaker as if she suspects it of stealing her wallet.

"Is that…" her suspicious gaze swivels around and lands on Tom. Just low enough so Anna won't hear she hisses, "You never _recorded_ that!"

He ducks his head guiltily.

"Tom!"

"I'm sorry! I thought..." _Fucking hell,_ _honeymoon's not even over…_

But her eyes have taken on that unfocused listening look again, her head bobbing along with the track. It _is_ rather beguiling. In the lull Tom hears the ghosts of a murmur underneath the synths: _Oh, my love… _

"What do you think?" Anna asks, and even with her back turned neither of them miss the smirk in her voice. "I found a bit of… something at the tail end of the vocal you did when I went for lunch yesterday." She's openly giggling now. "I, er... sampled it and used it as a backing track."

"A bit of _something._" Sybil gives Tom a glare. But it's not one of her fiercer ones, and he thinks he may be off the hook.

He raises his hands in a show of innocence. "I could've sworn I clicked _Pause_. I don't know computers! I'm still on a typewriter, remember?"

Sybil looks appealingly at Anna. "Anna, I hope you know that we…"

""I think it adds a certain warmth, don't you?" Anna's hand goes to the mouse. "No, really! Listen." She mutes the track and instantly the song jumps into straight lines, an almost clinical-sounding roteness.

Now Tom's face bears a smirk. "It does seem be missing something without it."

"Missing what, sex?" scoffs Sybil.

"Exactly," says Anna, re-enabling the track in time for them to hear a moment that Sybil remembers quite well. "Wow, you're almost harmonizing right there, aren't you?" She bats away the pillow Sybil throws at her. "Watch it, this is expensive equipment!"

Sybil glares at Tom, his twitching lips and dancing eyes. "I'm glad _you _think it's so funny. Now I won't even be able to show my grandmother what her wedding gift's bought."

"It'll be lower in the final mix," Anna assures her. "We don't need it taking over, do we?"

"Certainly not." Sybil collapses back into the cushion, arms folded. They listen as the song ends. "I suppose you're right… it does add warmth."

"I'd say so." Tom leans close, and while Anna's turned toward the computer he takes the opportunity to stick his tongue in Sybil's ear. "We should get Anna to burn us a CD of it for when we get home," he whispers.

With her eyes focused on Anna, who's still absorbed in the graphical dials and sliders on the monitor, Sybil's hand swoops unerringly between Tom's legs. She strokes gently but firmly through his trousers until she feels him get hard—it doesn't take long—and then, after a few seconds, returns it to her own lap. She doesn't look at him; doesn't need to.

"Hey, Anna," he says, his voice only a bit higher than usual. "You hungry?"

_AN #2: The full original prompt goes like this:_

_Imagine your OTP are in a band and they're recording an album. One night, after everyone else has gone home, Person A persuades Person B to have a little naughty fun with them in one of the recording booths. Unfortunately, someone left the mic on, and when their bandmates come in the next morning, they find that everything's been recorded. Bonus points if one of the other band members wants to use it as a hidden track on the album._


End file.
